Honourable Lewis Hamilton's mental dedication to F1 is "quite freakish" - James Allison

Lewis Hamilton

Honourable Hamilton's mental dedication to F1 is "quite freakish" - Allison

Mercedes' technical director hails six-times champion's attributes

Ian Parkes

Sunday 26 April 2020 14:48 Updated: 15:56

Lewis Hamilton has been hailed as a model of integrity, and possessing a mental dedication to Formula 1 that "is quite freakish".

The remarks come from Mercedes technical director James Allison, who has had the pleasure of working with Hamilton for the past three years and helped design cars that have propelled the 35-year-old to three of his six world titles.

Allison concedes that being "brought up in a Forces household", as his father Sir John Allison served in the RAF, rising to the role of Air Chief Marshal, that integrity is "high up on the totem pole of values within the armed services, and therefore matters highly to him as an individual".

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Addressing such a characteristic in Hamilton, speaking in an interview on Mercedes' official Youtube channel, Allison said: "I've been lucky to work with people who have the highest integrity, and I do think that is a characteristic that marks out Lewis.

"He is one of the oldest drivers on the grid now, and still drives like one of the youngest, but in a career of multiple championships and countless wins, you will struggle to find a moment on the track where you will see Lewis do something ugly.

"You will see him do many, many breathtaking things, you will see him do brave things, but you won't see just crude dodgem car stuff, or any sort of artifice to the way he drives.

"I hope he manages to keep this going for the remainder of his driving career because it is an utterly unblemished record, and I think that amongst multiple world champions, it is also unprecedented to have all that success without anything that has even a hint of a shadow of poor sportsmanship hanging over it. It's impressive."

Allison has also been impressed by Hamilton's remarkable commitment to the sport and his seemingly limitless energy in his desire to improve and to continue to be the best at his craft.

"The level of drive Lewis has - indeed, all these multiple champions have - is quite staggering," added Allison.

"You can think you're a competitive person, a driven person, and then you bump into someone who really is, and that actually you realise that you're a middle-of-the-road, lackadaisical drifter by comparison.

"I don't know that it's easy to compare the Fangio generation of driver to the current. There are probably a lot more people doing it now than there were back then, it's a more competitive market, and the ability to judge the performance level of the drivers is so much higher than it was back in the day.

"I do think there comes a time where a driver's racecraft is still incredibly strong, but that last little extra special something that gives them the qualifying genius starts to slip through their fingers.

"One of the interesting things about Lewis is that's still very much with him, and I think he is blessed with extraordinary physical talents to go along with this mental dedication that is quite freakish."